Global IP traffic will increase nearly threefold over the next 5 years, and will have increased 127-fold from 2005 to 2021. Overall, IP traffic will grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 24 percent from 2016 to 2021.

Busy-hour Internet traffic is growing more rapidly than average Internet traffic. Busy-hour (or the busiest 60 minute period in a day) Internet traffic increased 51 percent in 2016, compared with 32-percent growth in average traffic. Busy-hour Internet traffic will increase by a factor of 4.6 between 2016 and 2021, while average Internet traffic will increase by a factor of 3.2.

Smartphone traffic will exceed PC traffic by 2021. In 2016, PCs accounted for 46 percent of total IP traffic, but by 2021 PCs will account for only 25 percent of traffic. Smartphones will account for 33 percent of total IP traffic in 2021, up from 13 percent in 2016. PC-originated traffic will grow at a CAGR of 10 percent, while TVs, tablets, smartphones, and Machine-to- Machine (M2M) modules will have traffic growth rates of 21 percent, 29 percent, 49 percent, and 49 percent, respectively.

Traffic from wireless and mobile devices will account for more than 63 percent of total IP traffic by 2021. By 2021, wired devices will account for 37 percent of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 63 percent of IP traffic. In 2016, wired devices accounted for the majority of IP traffic at 51 percent.

Global Internet traffic in 2021 will be equivalent to 127 times the volume of the entire global Internet in 2005. Globally, Internet traffic will reach 30 GB per capita by 2021, up from 10 GB per capita in 2016.

The number of devices connected to IP networks will be three times as high as the global population in 2021. There will be 3.5 networked devices per capita by 2021, up from 2.3 networked devices per capita in 2016. Accelerated in part by the increase in devices and the capabilities of those devices, IP traffic per capita will reach 35 GB per capita by 2021, up from 13 GB per capita in 2016.

Broadband speeds will nearly double by 2021. By 2021, global fixed broadband speeds will reach 53.0 Mbps, up from 27.5 Mbps in 2016.

It would take an individual more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks each month in 2021. Every second, a million minutes of video content will cross the network by 2021.

Globally, IP video traffic will be 82 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2021, up from 73 percent in 2016. Global IP video traffic will grow threefold from 2016 to 2021, a CAGR of 26 percent. Internet video traffic will grow fourfold from 2016 to 2021, a CAGR of 31 percent.

Live Internet video will account for 13 percent of Internet video traffic by 2021. Live video will grow 15-fold from 2016 to 2021.

Internet video surveillance traffic increased 72 percent in 2016, from 516 Petabytes (PB) per month at the end of 2015 to 883 PB per month in 2016. Internet video surveillance traffic will increase sevenfold between 2016 and 2021. Globally, 3.4 percent of all Internet video traffic will be due to video surveillance in 2021, up from 1.8 percent in 2016.

Virtual reality and augmented reality traffic will increase 20-fold between 2016 and 2021, at a CAGR of 82 percent.

Internet video to TV grew 50 percent in 2016. Internet video to TV will continue to grow at a rapid pace, increasing 3.6-fold by 2021. Internet video-to-TV traffic will be 26 percent of consumer Internet video traffic by 2021, up from 24 percent in 2016.

Consumer Video-on-Demand (VoD) traffic will nearly double by 2021. The amount of VoD traffic in 2021 will be equivalent to 7.2 billion DVDs per month.

Content Delivery Network (CDN) traffic will carry 71 percent of all Internet traffic by 2021. Seventy-one percent of all Internet traffic will cross CDNs by 2021 globally, up from 52 percent in 2016.

Globally, mobile data traffic will increase sevenfold between 2016 and 2021. Mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 46 percent between 2016 and 2021, reaching 48.3 EB per month by 2021. Fixed IP traffic will grow at a CAGR of 21 percent between 2016 and 2021, while mobile traffic grows at a CAGR of 46 percent.

Global mobile data traffic will grow twice as fast as fixed IP traffic from 2016 to 2021. Global mobile data traffic was 7 percent of total IP traffic in 2016, and will be 17 percent of total IP traffic by 2021.

IP traffic is growing fastest in the Middle East and Africa, followed by Asia Pacific. Traffic in the Middle East and Africa will grow at a CAGR of 42 percent between 2016 and 2021.

IP traffic in North America will reach 85 EB per month by 2021, at a CAGR of 20 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in North America will generate 11 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 44.7 EB per month.

IP traffic in Western Europe will reach 37 EB per month by 2021, at a CAGR of 22 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in Western Europe will generate 6 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 24.1 EB per month.

IP traffic in Asia Pacific will reach 108 EB per month by 2021, at a CAGR of 26 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in Asia Pacific will generate 14 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 56.4 EB per month.

IP traffic in Latin America will reach 16 EB per month by 2021, at a CAGR of 42 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in Latin America will generate 2 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 9.9 EB per month.

IP traffic in Central and Eastern Europe will reach 17.0 EB per month by 2021, at a CAGR of 22 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in Central and Eastern Europe will generate 4 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 15.9 EB per month.

IP traffic in the Middle East and Africa will reach 16 EB per month by 2021, at a CAGR of 42 percent. Monthly Internet traffic in the Middle East and Africa will generate 3 billion DVDs’ worth of traffic, or 10.3 EB per month.

Business IP traffic will grow at a CAGR of 21 percent from 2016 to 2021. Increased adoption of advanced video communications in the enterprise segment will cause business IP traffic to grow by a factor of 3 between 2016 and 2021.

Business Internet traffic will grow at a faster pace than IP WAN. IP WAN will grow at a CAGR of 10 percent, compared with a CAGR of 20 percent for fixed business Internet and 41 percent for mobile business Internet.

Business IP traffic will grow fastest in North America. Business IP traffic in North America will grow at a CAGR of 23 percent, a faster pace than the global average of 21 percent. In volume, Asia Pacific will have the largest amount of business IP traffic in 2021, at 17 EB per month. North America will be the second at 14 EB per month.

Following is the methodology through each step for a single application category (in this case, Internet video) where the estimation process is illustrated.

The forecast for Internet video begins with estimations of the number of consumer fixed Internet users. Even such a basic measure as consumer fixed Internet users can be difficult to assess, because few analyst firms segment the number of users by both segment (consumer versus business) and network (mobile versus fixed). The number of consumer fixed Internet users was not taken directly from an analyst source but was estimated from analyst forecasts for consumer broadband connections, data on hotspot users from a variety of government sources, and population forecasts by age segment. The number of Internet video users was collected and estimated from a variety of sources, and the numbers were then reconciled with the estimate of overall Internet users.

After the number of Internet video users has been established, the number of users for each video subsegment must be estimated. It was assumed that all Internet video users view short-form video in addition to other forms of video they may watch. The number of Internet video users who watch long-form video (based partially on comScore Video Metrix figures for video sites whose average viewing time is longer than 5 minutes), live video, ambient video, and Internet Personal Video Recorder (PVR) is estimated.

For each application subsegment, Minutes of Use (MOU) are estimated. Multiple sources are used to determine MOU. Special care is taken to help ensure that the total number of Internet video minutes is well within the total number of video minutes (including television broadcast) for each user. For example, if the average individual watches a total of 4 hours of video content per day, the sum of Internet, managed IP, and mobile video hours should be a relatively small portion of the total 4 hours.

After MOU have been estimated for each sub segment of video, the next step is to apply kilobytes (KB) per minute. To calculate KB per minute, first the regional and country average broadband speeds are estimated for the years 2016 through 2021. For each application category, a representative bit rate is established, and this representative bit rate grows at approximately the same pace as the broadband speed. For video categories, a 7 percent annual compression gain is applied to the bit rate. Local bit rates are then calculated based on how much the average broadband speed in the country differs from the global average, the digital screen size in the country, and the computing power of the average device in the country. Combining these factors yields bit rates that are then applied to the MOU.

The next step in the methodology is to multiply the bit rates, MOU, and users together to get average PB per month.

The next step is to reconcile the Internet, managed IP, and mobile segments of the forecast. The portion of mobile data traffic that has migrated from the fixed network is subtracted from the fixed forecast, and the amount of mobile data traffic offloaded onto the fixed network through dual-mode devices and femtocells is added back to the fixed forecast.

The sections that follow present quantitative results of the forecast and details of the methodology for each segment and type. Due to rounding, numbers presented in this document may not add up precisely to the totals.

Table 1 shows the top-line forecast. According to this forecast, global IP traffic in 2016 stands at 96 EB per month and will nearly triple by 2021, to reach 278 EB per month. Consumer IP traffic will reach 232.7 EB per month and business IP traffic will be 45.5 EB per month by 2021.

●Internet: Denotes all IP traffic that crosses an Internet backbone

The following tables show cross-tabulations of end-user segment and network type for the final year of the forecast period (2021). Consumer Internet remains the primary generator of IP traffic, but mobile data has the highest growth rate and begins to generate significant traffic by 2021 (Table 2).

Table 2.Exabytes per month as of year end 2021

Consumer

Business

Total

Internet

154

33

187

Managed IP

37

5

42

Mobile data

41

7

48

Total

232

45

277

Source: Cisco VNI, 2017

Table 3 shows the same data as Table 2, but in terms of annual traffic run rates. These run rates are based on the monthly traffic at the end of 2021.

Table 3.Exabytes per year as of year end 2021

Consumer

Business

Total

Internet

1,848

400

2,249

Managed IP

447

63

509

Mobile data

497

82

579

Total

2,792

545

3,337

Source: Cisco VNI, 2017

Consumer and business traffic are both dominated by Internet traffic, although business traffic is more evenly distributed across public Internet and managed IP (Table 4).

Table 4.Traffic share by end-user segment as of year end 2021

Consumer

Business

Internet

66%

73%

Managed IP

16%

12%

Mobile data

18%

15%

Total

100%

100%

Source: Cisco VNI, 2017

Consumer traffic accounts for the majority of IP traffic in every network type segment. Consumer traffic will be 82 percent of all fixed Internet traffic, 88 percent of all of managed IP traffic, and 86 percent of all mobile data traffic (Table 5).

Table 5.Traffic share by network type as of year end 2021

Consumer

Business

Total

Internet

82%

18%

100%

Managed IP

88%

12%

100%

Mobile data

86%

14%

100%

Total

84%

16%

100%

Source: Cisco VNI, 2017

Consumer Internet traffic will represent more than half of all IP traffic, followed by consumer-managed IP (VoD), which represents 13 percent of traffic (Table 6).

6,408

9,297

13,505

49%

Latin America

4,844

6,188

7,614

9,073

10,795

12,938

22%

Total (PB per Month)

Total IP traffic

78,250

99,777

124,689

154,935

190,474

232,655

24%

Source: Cisco VNI, 201

This category encompasses any IP traffic that crosses the Internet and is not confined to a single service provider’s network. Internet video streaming and downloads are beginning to take a larger share of bandwidth and will grow to more than 81 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2021 (Table 8).

This general category encompasses web browsing, email, instant messaging, data (which includes file transfer using HTTP and FTP), and other Internet applications (Table 9). Note that data may include the download of video files that are not captured by the Internet video-to-PC forecast. This category includes traffic generated by all individual Internet users. An Internet user is here defined as someone who accesses the Internet through a desktop or laptop computer at home, school, Internet café, or other location outside the context of a business.

Table 9.Global consumer web, email, and data traffic, 2016–2021

Consumer Web, Email, and Data Traffic, 2016–2021

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

CAGR 2016–2021

By Network (PB per Month)

Fixed web and data

6,795

7,467

8,569

9,610

10,706

11,337

11%

Mobile web and data

2,263

3,214

4,295

5,509

6,796

8,201

29%

By Geography (PB per Month)

Asia Pacific

3,393

4,102

5,072

6,160

7,398

8,453

20%

North America

2,578

2,863

3,149

3,410

3,631

3,792

8%

Central and Eastern Europe

1,302

1,404

1,598

1,790

1,994

2,095

10%

Western Europe

693

901

1,177

1,450

1,692

1,882

22%

Middle East and Africa

469

732

1,038

1,358

1,728

2,189

36%

Latin America

624

680

831

953

1,059

1,128

13%

Total (PB per Month)

Consumer web, email, and data

9,059

10,681

12,864

15,120

17,502

19,538

17%

Source: Cisco VNI, 2017

This category includes traffic from P2P applications such as BitTorrent and eDonkey, as well as web-based file sharing. Note that a large portion of P2P traffic is due to the exchange of video files, so a total view of the impact of video on the network should count P2P video traffic in addition to the traffic counted in the Internet video-to-PC and Internet video-to-TV categories. Table 10 shows the forecast for consumer P2P traffic from 2016 to 2021. Note that the P2P category is limited to traditional file exchange and does not include commercial video-streaming applications that are delivered through P2P, such as PPStream or PPLive.

Table 10.Global consumer file-sharing traffic, 2016–2021

Consumer File Sharing, 2016–2021

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

CAGR 2016–2021

By Network (PB per Month)

Fixed

6,599

6,773

6,679

6,517

6,353

6,552

0%

Mobile

29

37

38

36

35

43

8%

By Subsegment (PB per Month)

P2P file transfer

5,376

5,249

4,845

4,334

3,807

3,858

-6%

Other file transfer

1,252

1,561

1,873

2,220

2,581

2,737

17%

By Geography (PB per Month)

Asia Pacific

2,534

2,571

2,519

2,434

2,290

2,335

-2%

North America

1,204

1,416

1,616

1,824

2,006

2,196

13%

Western Europe

1,178

1,222

1,212

1,190

1,130

1,195

0%

Central and Eastern Europe

927

809

656

532

494

467

-13%

Latin America

671

698

645

536

436

366

-11%

Middle East and Africa

114

94

69

39

33

36

-21%

Total (PB per Month)

Consumer file sharing

6,628

6,810

6,717

6,554

6,388

6,595

0%

Source: Cisco VNI, 2017

With the exception of the Internet video-to-TV subcategory, all of the Internet video subcategories consist of online video that is downloaded or streamed for viewing on a PC screen (Table 11). Internet video to TV is Internet delivery of video to a TV screen through a Set-Top Box (STB) or equivalent device. Much of the video streamed or downloaded through the Internet consists of free clips, episodes, and other content offered by traditional content producers such as movie studios and television networks.

◦Mobile video: All video that travels over a second-, third-, or fourth-generation (2G, 3G, or 4G, respectively) network

With the emergence of popular video-streaming services that deliver Internet video to the TV and other device endpoints, CDNs have prevailed as a dominant method to deliver such content. Globally, 70 percent of all Internet traffic will cross CDNs by 2021, up from 52 percent in 2016. Globally, 77 percent of all Internet video traffic will cross CDNs by 2021, up from 67 percent in 2016 (Table 12).

Table 12.Global content delivery network internet traffic, 2016–2021

CDN Traffic, 2016–2021

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

CAGR 2016–2021

By Geography (PB per Month)

North America

17,696

24,545

32,795

42,976

53,141

63,519

38%

Asia Pacific

10,259

14,715

20,416

28,415

38,831

55,306

53%

Western Europe

7,155

9,869

13,035

17,049

21,750

27,760

40%

Central and Eastern Europe

1,589

2,257

3,025

4,093

5,565

7,650

50%

Latin America

1,245

1,799

2,453

3,226

4,414

6,569

52%

Middle East and Africa

396

702

1,168

1,877

3,092

4,848

84%

Total (PB per Month)

CDN Internet traffic

38,340

53,888

72,893

97,636

126,793

165,651

44%

Source: Cisco VNI, 2017

Managed IP video is IP traffic generated by traditional commercial TV services (Table 13). This traffic remains within the footprint of a single service provider, so it is not considered Internet traffic. (For Internet video delivered to the set-top box, refer to Internet video to TV in the section “Internet Video”.)

Table 13.Global consumer-managed IP traffic, 2016–2021

Consumer-Managed IP Traffic, 2016–2021

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

CAGR 2016–2021

By Network (PB per Month)

Fixed

19,619

23,351

27,142

30,683

33,978

37,215

14%

By Geography (PB per Month)

North America

6990

8759

10556

12325

14044

15767

18%

Asia Pacific

9411

10691

11985

13018

13923

14856

10%

Western Europe

2277

2609

2937

3274

3528

3713

10%

Latin America

532

722

931

1164

1408

1650

25%

Central and Eastern Europe

315

444

572

703

837

953

25%

Middle East and Africa

94

125

161

198

239

276

24%

Total (PB per Month)

Managed IP video traffic

19,619

23,351

27,142

30,683

33,978

37,215

14%

Source: Cisco VNI, 2017

The enterprise forecast is based on the number of network-connected computers worldwide. In our experience, this basis provides the most accurate measure of enterprise data usage. An average business user might generate 4 GB per month of Internet and WAN traffic. A large-enterprise user would generate significantly more traffic, 8–10 GB per month (Table 14).